The further I get from you
by Animegoil
Summary: In which the Gerudo Desert takes a life of its own and Sheik struggles with the uncertainty of the final confrontation with Ganondorf in relation to Link and Zelda, but not himself. Eventually they talk some sense into him, but not before the desert almost kills them in very different ways. Link/Sheik, OoT.
1. Chapter 1

**Been on a LOZ binge, and got a prompt to write these two.** **Note, this is male!Sheik, with Zelda as a separate entity within him. Playing fast and loose with Sheikah culture/origins, and Gerudo Desert.**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

 _ **The further I**_ _ **ge**_ _ **t**_ _ **from you**_

* * *

The desert sand crunches between his teeth like brittle bones, and no amount of spitting will cleanse the grit, as if the shards have taken root between his gums, scraping his tongue when he licks his too-dry lips. Sheik stands, wipes his mouth with a shaking hand, tucks his cowl properly back across his face, and watches the lingering embers of the poe crumble and dissolve into the night, too bright against the dimness of the moonless sky and endless sand.

This poe had been particularly vicious when compared to the ones in Hyrule Field and their evasive, almost lackadaisical movements. There are stories, hearsay leftover from the early days of the Sheikah, about vengeful desert spirits. He wonders if this is what they are referring to. The chill that seeps into the air whenever there's a poe around has yet to recede – or maybe it's just him, shivering from the surprise attack, arm throbbing where the poe had managed to land a blow.

No matter. His work here is complete. He has taught Link the last of the songs and managed to escape before any of the questions bubbling in Link's throat burst out along with his lunge forward. Questions he wouldn't have been able to answer yet. Questions he wouldn't have wanted to answer.

He turns towards the swirling miasma of sand that is the Haunted Wasteland and throws one last glance over his shoulder towards the colossus in the distance that houses the Spirit Temple. The urge to bow his head at the goddess of the Gerudo overtakes him for a moment – he recognizes enough of Nayru's likeness in the statue to feel obligatory respect, but he wonders why he bothers.

Sheik performs his duties with the fervor of a scholar or a priest, filled with the utmost conviction of their importance and a devotion that leaves no room for thoughts of other paths. He is a model Sheikah – or so it seems to the rest of the world, to whom the Sheikah are more legend than fact. Impa knows better. More than once has she uttered the word "heresy" with the rumbling undertones of warning snapping his mouth shut and pulling his eyelashes down in affected deference. He understands – they, better than most, know of the power and truth of the Three Goddesses who created the world and the Triforce.

But maybe it is precisely the truth of their existence that has allowed him to see past the pedestal. The goddesses do not trifle with mortal matters; they are aloof giants that only step in when the balance of the world is at stake. It's questionable whether they are even aware of the way those who know of them interweave the goddesses' names with their wishes with as if that will strengthen their chances of fulfillment.

Sheik knows better. They will never intervene on a mere mortal's behalf. Sheik's reverence will never reach them and they do not expect it, so what point is there?

The tug of a shiver emanating from between his shoulder blades snaps him back to the present. He blinks, unsettled by the fact that he can't recall how long he's been standing there in the dark, wind whipping the ends of his cowl and tabard back and forth like angry tails. Long enough that the gradual crusade of the desertscape has managed to conquer a portion of his feet, at least. It's only the sheer habit of composure that keeps him from scrubbing his face in exhaustion and irritation as he frees his feet one by one.

He turns, murmurs words of luck that will never reach Link, and then wonders if maybe he isn't a hypocrite himself.

o0o

Link watches the sun sink between the pillars in front of the Spirit Temple, fingers hovering over the cool ceramic of the ocarina in his lap. He moves his fingers in the same pattern, over and over, and imagines placing them one by one on Sheik's face instead, to smooth away the fear that had burst there when Link had lunged forward.

His gut curls because thankful as he is for the breathtaking sight of Sheik's silhouette against the fiery gold sunset, this is the last temple, the last tune. He doesn't know if he will see Sheik before he confronts Ganondorf, and after… Link hasn't thought about the after yet.

All he knows is that he doesn't want his last memory of Sheik to be of a single red-flecked eye widening in fear.

o0o

Sheik makes it back to the Gerudo Fortress a few hours before dawn, head buzzing, darting between shadows to escape the ever-watchful eye of the Gerudo guards. By the time he finds an isolated crevice in the surrounding hills, the need for sleep is so overpowering that he doesn't even bother shaking out the sand nestled in the folds of his cloak or removing his supply belt before he curls up under the overhang of a rock and lets the buzzing overtake him until it blocks everything else out.

He wakes up in that smudge of time when the earth has taken its last intake of night air and still holding its breath before exhaling the start of a new day. His waking is not as graceful as that, heart hammering, pebbles digging under his fingernails as he scrambles against the gritty ground. He's already rising into a crouch, gasping, looking up automatically to make sure his abrupt awakening hasn't alerted anything unpleasant of his presence.

The only response is a songbird twittering in the distance and he sighs and slumps back down.

 _Sheik?_

 _It was only a dream, my Lady_ , he sends back, and rubs his arm. It feels cold right below the junction of his elbow, where the poe had struck him. Link's lifeless pupils had been colder, sinking into eyelids that had become wrinkled folds of skin threatening to slip straight through the sockets of his skull.

 _Stop_ , Zelda whispers, and Sheik feels the echoes of her horror in the turning of his own stomach. _Don't think about that anymore_.

He tries not to. He'd meant to rest today, replenish his spent energy and supplies while Link sets about obtaining the last medallion. This is how it always is. His work ends where Link's begins. He investigates each temple, drives out the easier filth and exorcises the deepest corners, all for the sake of allowing Link to focus on what can only be done by the Hero of Time. Then he steps back, passes on words of wisdom and the sacred tunes, and begins thinking about the next stage.

Though Link will never know it, the two of them are opposite sides of the same coin when it comes to the battle against Ganondorf – Sheik is simply always the side that lands facedown.

But try as he may, he can't stop seeing Link's dried-out corpse gradually covered under fine-soothed layers of sand until all that's left is a tattered hint of green peeking from the rusty grains. It doesn't help that his arm feels like there's ice instead of bone at the center, and no matter how tightly he presses it against his chest, the warmth doesn't seem to seep in. The discomfort is just enough to keep him from sinking into anything more than a doze, which is snapped immediately by the rustling of wildlife and the noises of daily life that reverberate through the valley from the fortress below.

 _Shh_ , Zelda says. Sheik knows it's only a trick of the mind, but he feels her light touch on his arm along with her soothing voice. He doesn't know how she does it, but white noise like the sound of snowfall fills his head, and within seconds it drowns out everything else.

o0o

He wakes up feeling only marginally better, but between the brightness of the afternoon sun and the shrinking of his stomach in hunger, he gives up on sleep. There are more important things anyway – he wants to head back to Hyrule and leave false clues of Link's whereabouts. Ganondorf may be arrogant, but he is far from foolish; he knows Link is a risk and he wants to mitigate that risk, even if it's simply by commanding his followers to attack Link on sight and sending expendable reinforcements to follow him and cause whatever damage possible. But any enemy Sheik can throw off Link's path is one less battle that will wear him out, especially now as they get closer to the final confrontation…

His stomach does an impressive turnaround from hunger to repulsion at the thought, but he breathes to the rhythm of the waves at Lake Hylia until the stone at the pit of his stomach dissolves. Then he eats what's left of his travel rations, enjoying the water-crunch of the leaves of a nearby succulent instead of using up what's left in his canteen.

He finds himself looking out over the rippled desert, even though Link is surely on his way to the Temple of Time already, and feels the familiar tightening of his chest. He'd given up trying to explain it away as staunch duty or simple affection, given that neither were accompanied by that ache when directed at Zelda. Link is special, and Sheik can, now that things are spiraling to their inevitable end, freely admit that he evokes something in Sheik that he never even thought himself capable of.

 _Though my devotion will always be first and foremost to you, my Lady_ , he adds with the smallest of smirks. It's a long-running joke at this point. Zelda's exasperation tastes like a tart apple in his mind, balanced by honey-sweet affection dribbling down the sides.

The ache is sharper than usual today, which he attributes to the glare of the sun crumpling the air over the searing sand until the distortion makes him dizzy. The desert makes him feel nostalgic somehow, its barren, brutal solitude resonating within him until he thinks it might crack him from the inside out and spill everything he's kept tightly sealed within. What would Link think, he wonders absently, of the darkness that would seep into the sand like blood? Hopefully it would evaporate under the scorching sunlight, sizzling and smoking on the spot, because some things are not meant to see the light of day.

 _You make things harder for yourself_ , Zelda says lightly. Sheik sighs. It's an equally as old argument.

 _We don't have room for distractions_ , he says.

Zelda laughs, and it's a mysterious thing, how her voice has become richer and deeper with age, molasses burnt at the edges, despite no physical body to produce the change. He often wonders what her real laugh will be like once she reclaims her body.

 _Oh Sheik_ , she says, settling back into the recesses of his mind, _How can you call the thing that gives you purpose and hope a distraction?_

It's a fair point in terms of semantics, but she is naïve. There are many reasons why he keeps his distance from Link – uncertainty of the future is one of them, certainly, but the real reason is much simpler.

Sheik sees no need for such a risk.

Sheik has always believed himself to be obsessive – the level-headedness others have praised him for is nothing more than an understanding that a clear mind will get him closer to his goal, and he will do anything to accomplish his goal. He has Impa to thank for that understanding, for the years she spent teaching him to focus on the means and the consequences of said means as much as the goal itself. When he could not rest because his brain was wired around the latest challenge she had presented him, invariably making him more prone to mistakes, she'd taught him how to calm his mind and measure his limits. How to _best_ accomplish the goal became the goal itself, and Sheik has since focused on that idea to the exclusion of most else. Calm as his exterior may be, Sheik knows his soul to be a paper lantern held over a fire, already filled to expansion with heat that could peel skin clean off bone. The question is, how much closer to the flames could he get before spontaneously combusting?

Sheik has taken his cue from the moon and placed himself in a stable orbit at a safe distance. Any closer, and he'll get sucked in by Link's gravitational pull, and then there's only one outcome.

Sheik isn't sure he'd survive the impact.

o0o

(Even if he did, what would he gain by giving in to the impulse to get closer to Link? His affections would not change. He finds it hard to imagine he would give any _less_ thought to him. Duty and devotion to Link already consume his entire being as it is, even with the distance he has carefully cultivated between them. He can't imagine anything good coming out of getting closer. And more to Zelda's point, what does closer even entail – a friendship? They're already tied by something far stronger than that – fate and a common goal, Zelda and a love for Hyrule and its people. So why take the risk?

Sheik closes his eyes and envisions embers glinting in the air like fireflies, while the remains of his soul dissipate into acrid smoke. All it takes is a single gust of wind to scatter the fragile ashes, and then there truly is nothing left of him.)

o0o

Fooling the rank-and-file creatures that follow Ganondorf is laughably simple. The Kokiri have never stepped out of their forest, after all, so no one knows what they look like. All Sheik need do is don some green, slay a large amount of monsters, leave the shells of some deku nuts lying around, and reports of Link being sighted in the southern shores of Lake Hylia will abound. It's enough to muddle the trail, at the least, and divide Ganondorf's forces.

The operation takes a lot more out of him than he expected. Mostly to blame is the fact that he hasn't been able to get any significant rest since he left the Spirit Temple. The howl of the wolves has become a signal for his arm to seize up with an icy ache that starts slow but swells throughout the night, insistent for attention that even a red potion cannot satisfy. But even that isn't the problem – he has ways of forcing his body to rest through pain. No, worse than that is the pervasive anxiousness that starts prickling across his skin at nightfall like insect legs weaving through the fine hairs of his forearm. It keeps him staring blankly at the waxing moon, going over increasingly gruesome scenarios in his head, which all end with Link dead and Hyrule withering until there's nothing to do but raze it to the ground. The thoughts accompany him even to the unconscious realm, and he wakes in the hollow pit of the night with the feeling of grimy fingers digging into the tendons of his neck, a furious whisper saying _go to him, if he's gone, we're all done for_.

The whisper doesn't sound like him, but it speaks in his voice and Sheik isn't sure what that means.

Sheik lies there, his mind's eye roving over each rotting pore of Link's corpse, with the imaginary smell of flames singeing the inside of his nose and throat. The heat his mind conjures in this hellish scenario is at odds with the cold seeping from his arm, shrinking his flesh and sending tremor after tremor up from his fingertips and into his core, while his pulse hammers from the barely repressible need to stand and find Link, assure himself that he's safe and Hyrule still has a chance. Even Zelda's best attempts at soothing him are nothing more than tossing a towel over the tiger's cage. The pacing continues behind the fabric, and Sheik wonders if this is what it feels like to go insane.

He grits his teeth and tells himself that Link will be fine.

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 **It's been a struggle getting into Sheik's head, so any concrit would be appreciated. I estimate three more chapters?**


	2. Chapter 2

**In which Sheik monologues a lot and we trudge through the setup.**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

 _ **The further I**_ _ **ge**_ _ **t**_ _ **from you**_

* * *

 _The Sage of Spirit has finally awakened_. Zelda's voice rings with pride as the sun sets, ten days after Sheik leaves Link in front of the Spirit Temple.

He sucks in a breath, lungs expanding as if to make room for the hope and resolve that blossoms within her. He feels it too for a brief, sparkling moment, and it feels so good the way it wipes away the grime of weariness and paranoia that has built up over the past seven years. He's felt her soul swelling bit by bit as they get closer and closer to the end, leaving Sheik feeling uncomfortably full and lightheaded at times, as if his ribcage just isn't large enough to contain her and her paramount purpose. Is that how it will happen, when she's released back into the physical world? Will her soul, her essence, grow so large that Sheik's body is physically unable to contain her? Will his joints pop and his bones crack as she bursts through them, the weakest points in any structure, or will she pour forth from his eyes and mouth?

It will be an honor. He ruthlessly suppresses the twinge of regret that sparks as he watches the sinking sun pour gold over the landscape and remembers how it had softened Link's face.

o0o

He should be relieved to know that Link has completed the last temple. Instead, his mind comes up with new concerns. He wipes the brown, sticky redead blood off his knives as he cleans up Castle Town and frowns. What if he's done but injured? In the past, Sheik has waited for him, hidden, to determine whether the figure that stumbled out of the temple was merely exhausted or in need of help. This time, he thought it best to focus on diverting attention, clearing Link's path around the castle, and gathering intelligence. He also felt it was best to maintain as much distance as possible between the two of them, given the uncertainty of the future. Saying farewell will be hard enough at it is.

o0o

 _There's something wrong with you_ , Zelda finally says on the twelfth day. Sheik stands on the walls surrounding Lon Lon Ranch, checking the wards he left to see what monsters have been in the area. Not as many as usual in the past few weeks, which confirms Sheik's suspicions that Ganondorf is changing his tactics, gathering his troops closer to home. There was certainly no shortage of monsters in Castle Town, including some that shouldn't have been found anywhere but near Lake Hylia or Death Mountain.

Sheik clucks his tongue in annoyance. The Evil King won't be caught by surprise, it appears.

 _Are you ill?_

He pauses. He's exhausted, certainly, his limbs so heavy it takes actual effort to command them to move. His body is usually a seasoned battalion preempting his next move, instead of this reluctant militia that he has to wheedle into barely meeting expectations. The scattered catnaps he's able to grab whenever he finds a good hiding place have been able to sustain him despite the sleepless night, and he hopes that will be enough to carry him to the end. But ill? He rolls the word back and forth on his tongue, his unfocused eyes aimed at the western horizon, though he can't seem to muster the energy to realign them. Are they not all ill, breathing air that has been fouled and eating crops that come from a scorched and trampled earth? Have not countless from Kakariko and Castle Town fallen to the miasma rolling down Death Mountain? Sheik's body may have resisted, but with all that he's seen and all that he's taken part of, can he make the same claim for his mind?

 _That's not what I mean_ , Zelda insists, _You're doing it right now._

He almost laughs. Maybe she's right – in that brief burst of her hope, when it had flooded him with a feeling lighter than air, he had been shocked at the contrast between it and his current state of mind. But what illness could describe the heaviness of his thoughts and the way they inevitably veer back to the macabre? It's natural isn't it, the longer they live in this putrefied land and the closer they get to the end?

Link is done with the last temple, the final of the Six Sages is awake. Soon, Sheik will meet Link at the Temple of Time and Zelda will be released back into her own body. Sheik's work will be officially done, and Sheik has long since made peace with the possibility that his body may not survive the split. What matters is that Ganondorf is defeated. What matters is Link and Zelda, alive, not lying in a crumpled pile at the foot of the castle, bodies bloated while vultures and rats pick out bits of flesh from around their noses and flaccid lips, bile dripping from –

 _Stop!_ Zelda snaps, and the stinging pitch slices through his mind, making him flinch. _You're shaking_ , she adds, in a much quieter tone. Sheik looks at his hands and the way his fingers flutter discordantly. Interesting.

Sheik closes his eyes and swallows. His throat hurts as if he'd swallowed a fishbone, digging into the walls of his throat a little further down every time he tries to clear it. He shouldn't be this affected.

 _Just go to him,_ Zelda sighs. _It's alright to want to see him. Why deny yourself?_

Sheik frowns and reopens his eyes, though his eyelids protest, inching back down. Discipline is a pretty good reason, he wants to say. But that aside…

 _Do you insist out of guilt?_ he finally says. The sizzle of surprise that sparks in his mind, not quite covering the sudden musty smell of shame, is his answer. It's a low blow but it has the desired effect. She does not speak up the rest of the day and he tries not to feel guilty himself.

o0o

But it's true that the thought has been writhing in his head, framed by what ifs that alternate between the glowing red of hot flames and the deep red of pooled blood.

That night he dreams of Link emerging from the Spirit Temple, one hand digging into the wall for balance, the other pressed over a wide gash on his abdomen, glistening intestines on the verge of slipping out between the gaps of his blood-soaked fingers. Sheik wakes with the metallic smell of blood coating his nostrils and settling in the back of his throat, and Link's cracked voice crying out his name is so real that he starts responding before catching himself.

He jerks his cowl off his face despite the fact that he's shivering and leans back against the trunk of the tree he's perched on for the night, pulse thundering through his outstretched throat. Breathe, he thinks to himself. In. Out.

 _You're alright_ , Zelda murmurs, over and over again, brushing his bangs carefully out of his face. Or so it feels like. He's a little embarrassed to have her fuss over him so, even after all these years. But she's helped him through his worst (poisoned in a small cave near Death Mountain, sweating and vomiting alternately for a week, lonely and resentful of his fate still) and accompanied him through adolescence, which has resulted in more awkward moments than he sometimes cares to remember.

 _I'm fine now,_ he tells her once his pulse stops throbbing through his temples, and he doesn't need to voice his gratitude for her to feel it. His breathing is still much too loud with nothing but the occasional scrabbling of the stalchildren below to mask it. His arm aches and his eyes sting from too little sleep. Rubbing them just stretches the delicate skin and makes it worse. The moonlight doesn't help either, glaring far too brightly even splintered as it is by the leaves above him.

It's a full moon, which means… which means it has been a fortnight since he last saw Link. The creeping insect legs start skittering up his arms again, because Link should have left the desert by now. The wastelands take only a day to cross, and even accounting for a day of rest with the Gerudo, he's overdue. He should be back. He should be. There is a stone in one of his pockets that he has enchanted to vibrate when its twin is triggered by Link's presence – it alerted him of Link's return to the temple as an adult several days ago. But it has remained dormant since, which means Link has not crossed the narrow pass between Gerudo Valley and into Hyrule Field.

All of his nightmares flash through his mind at once and that _voice_ , his own voice, starts up again, repeating in a haunted tone _You failed him, you let him die, you failed him…_

No. Fate wouldn't be so cruel as to have Link need him the one time Sheik decides not to watch his exit from the temple…

He laughs. A sharp, hysterical bark of laughter that tears his unsuspecting throat a little. Because he has seven years and more of proof that fate would be _exactly_ that cruel.

He rises on shaky legs and leaps down through the branches, stumbling and falling hard on one knee. If he could think about anything other than Link and the content of his nightmares, he might concede that maybe Zelda is right. This blind, panicked fear isn't like him.

Instead, he heads to Gerudo Valley.

o0o

Sheik traverses the valley on the higher slopes, the better to keep out of sight. Usually it's just monsters he has to hide from, because other than a few herdsmen who eke out a rough living in the area or builders that come for specific projects like the bridge repair, the stranglehold of the Gerudo on the area means there hasn't been much traffic for ages. The valley is as desolate as the desert it leads to, despite a permanent water source.

This time, he's surprised and more than a little confused to see a small but steady trickle of travelers making the trek through the valley, women and children included, and none of them Gerudo. He stays well out of sight, suspicious at first, but they've all got the haggard look of survivors and a few are pulling carts with all of their belongings and even a handful of livestock here and there. He'd say they were fleeing, but there's cautious hope in the adults' faces and mirth in the children's, and their pace is relatively unhurried. No, these people are willingly moving.

He retrieves his resonating stone from the mountainside and then continues to follow the valley's path from above until he sees the small settlement of the lazy builders that Link had rescued before. Perfect. He slips down between the ridges of the valley until he reaches the bottom and sneaks into one of the tents after verifying that it's empty. One more thing to puzzle over, why the settlement is empty when it should have builders, quite in contrast with the valley which should be empty but is uncharacteristically trafficked.

The sudden coolness of the shade pulls a sigh from his chest as he wipes his brow and looks around. Among the dusty stacks of wood, loose nails and rusted saws, he finally finds a heap of canvas cloth, which he proceeds to tear off with his knife until he has a large, trailing piece of cloth he can wrap around himself. He has an actual cloak, but that one is for crossing the Haunted Wastelands, and he'd left it two weeks ago hidden beneath a rock past the Gerudo Fortress.

Sitting with a solid support of wood at his back and the refreshing dimness of the inside of the tent, his body sinks as if a lead blanket had been thrown over his shoulders. He sits there with the knife and cloth in his lap and every time he blinks it gets harder and harder to reopen his eyes. He could rest here for a little, couldn't he? To make up for the fortnight of sleepless nights? Immediately, Link's hollow eye sockets flash in his mind and his stomach curdles as if he'd swallowed vinegar. He presses a fist against his lips until the feeling subsides and then finishes cutting the canvas, standing up and ignoring the way his vision tilts for a second at the change in position. He pokes two holes at opposite ends of the canvas with the tip of his knife and cards a piece of rope through them to fasten the cloak around his shoulders, then sheathes his knife and slips back out of the tent.

He's surprised at how well he blends in. The few travelers around him also sport makeshift clothing and sashes, so his sawdust-covered cloak doesn't draw any attention. It's vaguely unnerving to put himself so glaringly out in the open, but at least the hood gives him some semblance of cover.

Behind him is the distant slap of two pair of feet. Sheik glances surreptitiously back, but the men are silent even between each other, with scowling, tired faces that do not invite an attempt at information gathering. Ahead of him is a group of three women, the cadence of their voices marking them as coming from southern Hyrule. Of the three, one is elderly, the other with the straddled gait of one with child, the last occasionally squeezing the shoulder of a young boy pulling a rattling cart with what appears to be meager belongings and supplies. He frowns and worries his lip. He has to wonder what makes such a vulnerable group willing to make this trip.

He trails a few yards behind them, not sure whether to be grateful for their slow pace. His body appreciates it; his mind urges him to move faster. But he has a duty to gather information on anything unusual, and a sudden influx of travelers headed towards the Gerudo qualifies. He strains his ears to overhear the conversation over the spattering of feet and wheels on hardened earth, but no matter how many times he shakes his head or pricks his finger on his knife in an attempt to rouse himself, within the minute his concentration fizzles out and he realizes he can't recall any of what he heard. He's tired, trails of sweat stinging his eyes and slipping under his cowl to pool in the dip of his collarbone. His feet scrape the ground shamefully with each step, defying years of stealth practice. He should be better than this.

The sun starts sinking lower, tinting the walls of the narrow valley pass with a deeper shade of yellow and lengthening the shadows. Soon the valley will fall into shadow, cut off from the sunlight by the mountain peaks. Sheik bites his lip, pulse suddenly racing at the marked passage of time. He takes a deep breath to brace his weary muscles and forces himself to speed up. He's only gathered that they are heading to meet others they know, and that they are uncertain as to the specifics of their destination. It's not enough, but Sheik suddenly fears he has already taken too long. What if Link really is–

 _I'm sure he's alright_ , Zelda says quietly. _Don't fret so, Sheik, it's not like you_.

His scowl deepens. He knows. He knows, and yet… He shivers involuntarily despite the blistering heat.

At his increased pace, he should reach the fortress in three hours' time, some time after nightfall. He passes the women with a brusque nod of acknowledgement when they appear about to greet him and begins to ascend the last ridge that will lead down into the Gerudo Fortress.

o0o

The women become small figurines, the men further away mere specs, the distance heightened by the altitude. This side of the ridge is completely bathed in shadow, blocked from the sun's dying rays, and for a moment the temperature is blessedly neutral, though Sheik knows that will soon change. The desert is a land of extremes, after all – violent winds, scorching heat, and chilling emptiness. He debates whether to slip back up into the mountainsides now that he's given up pretense of traveling like the others on the trail, but he's gotten this far already and the climb up the steep cliffside here is more trouble than it's worth.

Zelda is not the chattering type but she does it now, distracting him from the effort it takes to keep putting one foot in front of the other. She doesn't say it because she knows he'll brush it off, but he can feel her worry for him, catches its cloying scent of overripe fruit here and there. When his throat feels like it'll tear if he draws in one more dry, rasping breath, he stops for a moment, grabbing a gnarled trunk for support and pulls his sweat-soaked cowl off with a grimace. He downs the remainder of the water in his canteen, but rations his dried rabbit meats and flatbread in case he's not able to find any prey tonight. He's in that ironic position of needing to eat but not wanting to go through the lengthy process of hunting and skinning and cooking. It doesn't matter anyway. He just has to last a couple more weeks. Until Zelda's released from his body. Until the final mission is done. He can do that.

He reaches the top of the ridge, blinded by the glare of the setting sun for a brief moment as he catches his breath, leaning against a boulder. He's a little disgusted at how winded the climb made him. Before him, tucked away in shadow within the folds of the mountains, lies Gerudo Fortress. The glow of the setting sun bathes the topmost tips of the valley in deep blood red as well as the wrinkled ripple of mountains stretching out to the south and for a moment, Sheik stares, enthralled.

 _This is what we're protecting_ , Zelda says, equally entranced, and both of them fall in love all over again with the country they've sworn to protect. He'll miss this, he thinks with a sharp and sudden pang. Then twists his lips bitterly because he's somehow happy to feel that way about something other than Link and Zelda.

He closes his eyes to feel the first breeze of the evening, and takes a step to begin the descent towards the fortress.

That's when the scream comes, reverberating through the mountain pass.

* * *

 **Okay so things will finally pick up and we'll have more interaction than just between Sheik and Zelda next chapter. And we'll reach Gerudo Fortress, promise. Thanks to the lovely people who are reading this!**


End file.
